Risk Assessment

A Byte of Prevention: Best Practices in Cybersecurity

All local governments are potential targets for cybercrime, a risk that intensifies as victims increasingly pay ransoms to regain access to their hijacked technologies. It can be tempting to pay up because hacks are disruptive, damaging, and embarrassing – and expensive.

As stewards of (often sensitive) public data, finance officers must understand the significance of this threat, including the large costs governments face in recovering lost data, restoring public trust, and otherwise recovering from a breach.

This report identifies simple simple and inexpensive strategies that address people, process, and technology to protect their organizations from cyber threats without conducting a costly cybersecurity assessment. Many of the recommendations on the following pages address the weakest link in cybersecurity: the human factor.


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